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OnSite in Columbus

Day 3

Breakfast With Cambridge/Guernsey County

COSI Planetarium Show & Tour

Glenn Avenue Soap Company

Lunch at Hofbrauhaus

Watershed Distillery Tour

Progressive Dinner With

  Columbus Food Adventures

Overnight at Hilton Garden Inn & Hampton Inn University Area

Guests started their third day in Columbus with a breakfast at the hotel, where they were joined by members of the tourism community from Cambridge and Guernsey County, an area about 80 miles east of the city. The breakfast included talks and small demonstrations from Guernsey County attractions such as the National Museum of Cambridge Glass and the Living Word Outdoor Drama. After that, excursions took the group to the COSI Planetarium; the Glenn Avenue Soap Company, Hofbrauhaus and Watershed Distillery in Grandview; and a progressive dinner with Columbus Food Adventures.

COSI Planetarium Show and Tour

The FAM group visited COSI, a science and industry museum near the riverfront, for an engaging planetarium show. The museum’s new planetarium is the largest in Ohio and features a 60-foot dome and digital projection system. The show consisted of eye-popping imagery from throughout the Milky Way galaxy, as well as a question-and-answer session with an astronomer.

Glenn Avenue Soap Company

The group next headed to Grandview, a smaller municipality that borders Columbus, and visited the Glenn Avenue Soap Company, the only craft soap house in central Ohio. After learning about the company’s history and the science of essential oils and other scents used in the products, guests got to participate in a demo of soap-making, taking the finished product with them as a souvenir.

Watershed Distillery

After a German lunch at the Grandview outpost of Hofbrauhaus, the group visited Watershed Distillery, which has been making a name for itself in central Ohio since 2010. Visitors learned about the distilling process and visited the warehouse, where assorted products are made. They also got to taste samples of the distillery’s various products, including a bourbon, several gins and a specialty Italian walnut liquor called nocino.

Progressive Dinner with Columbus Food Adventures

Columbus has a thriving culinary scene, and the group got to experience the breadth of the city’s food culture on a progressive dinner with Columbus Food Adventures. The excursion began with a sampling tour at the city’s North Market and was followed by a beer tasting at Barley’s Brewing Company; a seafood paella experience at Barcelona, a tapas restaurant; oversized cream puffs at Schmidt’s in German Village; and a sample of Jeni’s Splendid Ice Cream, a favorite Columbus treat.

Day 4

Breakfast on the Savannah at the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium

American Whistle Company

Candle Lab

Igloo Letterpress

Lunch at the Worthington Inn

Dublin Irish Festival

Columbus Clippers Game at Huntington Park

The final day of the Columbus FAM started on a high note as the group arrived early at the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium for a breakfast and animal encounter at the large Africa exhibit. From there, they visited some of the small, unique manufacturing companies in nearby Worthington, including the American Whistle Company, the Candle Lab and Igloo Letterpress, before having an elegant lunch at the historic Worthington Inn. From there, the trip went to the suburb of Dublin for the opening day of the Dublin Irish Festival and concluded back in downtown Columbus with a beautiful night at Huntington Ballpark for a Columbus Clippers baseball game.

Columbus Zoo and Aquarium: Breakfast on the Savannah

The group was escorted into the famous Columbus Zoo and Aquarium before it opened and had a full breakfast in the cafe overlooking the savannah area of the zoo’s Africa exhibit. In addition to seeing large African animals from a distance, participants got to hold and take pictures with a baby penguin, kangaroo, cougar and bobcat. The visit ended with an opportunity to feed giraffes from a platform overlooking their habitat.

Worthington Businesses

FAM participants spent the rest of the morning visiting a trio of small businesses in the affluent suburb of Worthington. At the American Whistle Company, they learned about the manufacturing process used to make sports and safety whistles. Experts at the Candle Lab helped them make their own scented candles based on customized scent recipes. And the owner of Igloo Letterpress demonstrated how historic printing presses are used to create handmade stationary and other paper goods.

Dublin Irish Festival

Next, the tour went to the suburb of Dublin and the opening day of the Dublin Irish Festival, one of the largest three-day Irish festivals in the world. Participants enjoyed some of the 65 Irish dance and music acts that took place on the festival’s seven stages and got a detailed look at a long-standing Irish wake experience from historic interpreters.

Columbus Clippers Game

The group ended its Columbus experience in comfort at a luxury suite at Huntington Park, where they watched the minor league Columbus Clippers baseball team play on a beautiful evening, complete with catered food and drinks. It was a relaxing and fun ending to a busy trip and the perfect place to begin planning their next group adventure in Columbus.

For more information on this itinerary contact Roger Dudley with Experience Columbus at 800-354-2657 or rdudley@experiencecolumbus.com.

www.experiencecolumbus.com

Brian Jewell

Brian Jewell is the executive editor of The Group Travel Leader. In more than a decade of travel journalism he has visited 48 states and 25 foreign countries.